ik-joong kang at the whitney museum
at philip morris
by Joan Kee
The Korean American artist Ik-Joong Kang
is primarily known for mosaic-like installation
works made up of 3 x 3-in. squares
representing various aspects of his life,
ranging from the names of artists who
influenced him to notes on his masturbation
practices. His most recent work, the tour-de-
force 8490 Days of Memory, ventured into
history via Kang's memories of his childhood in
the impoverished, war-torn Korea of the early
1960s.
The work represents a colossal effort--a
larger-than-life statue of General Douglas
MacArthur was constructed from chocolate
bars and stands in the middle of the
gallery on a low dais made of cubes of
resin. The walls of the gallery are covered
with Kang's trademark squares, here made of
chocolate and imprinted with U.S. military
insignia. The work underscores the powerful
way that memory can function through
vision, smell and even sound--notably the
Tom Jones hits, popular in the U.S. and
Korea in the 1960s, that Kang has playing
in the gallery. Deployed in a relatively
small space, the work poses a kind of
sensory overload from the strong smell of
chocolate, the maculation of the space
through the repeated squares and the giant
statue. The physical disorientation
suggests the similar fragmented process of
the recollection of long periods of time.
Chocolate is a powerful metaphor to Kang.
As a rare luxury in post-war South Korea,
casually supplied to local children by the
victorious G.I.s, chocolate symbolizes the
sweetness of American plenty while its
silver foil is a literal representation of
the glittering promise of wealth and the
American dream. Kang drives home this point
by incorporating MacArthur, who gained a
place in the hearts of Koreans (and a place
in their parks, through proliferating
statues) by masterminding the Inchon
landing, a crucial turning point in the
Korean War. The memorialization of the past
is also emphasized by small toys and other
childhood memorabilia set within each
transparent resin block under MacArthur's
statue. Each gonggi (jacks) set, each
eraser and each pair of doll shoes are
fossils embedded forever in Formica, as if
to suggest the enduring quality of Kang's
memories.
Despite the importance of memory and the
past, Kang's work is very much a work of
the present, avoiding Korean American
artistic cliches that attempt to compensate
for lack of substance by using inscrutable
components of the past. Chocolate is a
double entendre metaphor because when
exposed to heat, it rapidly melts and this
property parallels Kang's idea of America's
waning military power in both Korea and the
world. Likewise, the childhood memorabilia
used are not actual objects hoarded from
yesterday but objects that can be found or
purchased anywhere in Korea today. Such an
incorporation of present objects implies
that memories are often remembered using
the constructs of today. The conflicting
ideas of the present and the nostalgia of
the past give Kang's 8940 Days of Memory a
pulsating energy that reminds the viewer
that the past and present undergo a process
of constant interaction.
Ik-Joong Kang, 8940 Days of Memory, Whitney
Museum of American Art at Philip Morris,
120 Park Ave. (E. 42nd St.) New York, N.Y.
10017, July 11-Sept. 27, 1996.
JOAN KEE writes on contemporary
Asian and Asian American art.
